As a NY will contest lawyer with two decades of experience challenging fraudulent wills for New Yorkers I can tell you firsthand how difficult these cases can be.  To begin with, a NY will that has been drafted and supervised by a NY estate lawyer is accompanied by the attorney presumption of validity. This is why people have NY estate lawyers draft their wills in the first place.  This means that NY Surrogate’s Courts will presume that any will drafted by a NY estate attorney to be validly executed and the person executing their NY will to be competent.  Having successfully challenged NY estate lawyer drafted wills as a NY will contest lawyer I can tell you this is no easy task.  The attorney presumption of validity is a difficult hurdle to clear but is not always impossible.  While the attorney presumption of validity is substantial it can be rebutted with significant evidence illustrating that the document was not properly executed.

One of the main avenues of attack for a NY estate lawyer to rebut the attorney presumption of validity is undue influence.  If shown by a preponderance of the evidence that the purported instrument was the product of undue influence and not the will of the testator’s mind but the intent of another, the instrument will be denied probate.  As an experienced NY estate lawyer I can tell you one of the main factors courts look at is whether the purported instrument offered for probate deviates from the testator’s prior testamentary pattern.  In other words if there are one or more instruments leaving the decedent’s inheritance to A and B an now all of a sudden a document shows up leaving everything to C, that is a significant deviation in the testator’s testamentary pattern.  While this fact alone is not enough to invalidate an attorney drafted, supervised NY will, taken in the context of the totality of circumstances surrounding the testator’s will, such as diminished capacity and strength of decedent’s relationships, creates a triable issue of fact of undue influence for a NY estate lawyer to argue at trial. 

Estate of Robert Noland

Robert Noland was a prominent entrepreneur and well known philanthropist owning valuable mineral rights on tracts of land within the State of Louisiana.  At the time of Robert Noland’s passing on November 6, 2021, the 70 year old left behind an estate in excess of $15 million dollars which included a portfolio of valuable royalties, real estate and a yacht.  Robert Noland had one child, his daughter Amanda Noland.  Unfortunately Robert Noland also left behind a contested 2020 document purporting to be his Last Will & Testament.  This contested estate would eventually go to trial.  During the trial, Noland’s daughter Amanda admitted the two shared a strained relationship.  When pressed Amanda stated under oath she could not remember spending a single Father’s Day with her dad in two decades.  Amanda conceded at trial that she had only become involved in her father’s life during the last year he was alive well after his 2019 Alzheimer’s diagnosis when he could no longer care for himself or his affairs. 

During the period of Amanda’s involvement in Robert Noland’s affairs, Robert Noland curiously executed a document purporting to be his Last Will & Testament on December 29, 2020, ten months before his passing.   This fact alone does not cast a shadow of doubt over the dubiousness of the purported instrument.  However when determining the existence of undue influence a NY estate lawyer, as well as courts, must look to the totality of circumstances surrounding the document’s creation to determine whether it was more likely than not that the purported instrument was the product of undue influence. 

Here, the instrument purporting to be Robert Noland’s 2020 Last Will & Testament is a very suspicious document as it differs greatly from each of Noland’s five prior estate plans he had previously created. Additionally, Robert Noland had established a strong history of donative intent during his lifetime to his alma mater, McNeese State University where he donated nearly half a million ($500,000.00) dollars to their new football stadium.  Not only did Robert Noland donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to McNeese State University throughout his lifetime, he also had his longtime personal attorney, David Sigler, draft five separate wills making McNeese State University his primary beneficiary of nearly his entire estate in each document.  In each of the prior instruments, Noland’s somewhat estranged daughter Amanda Noland was only to receive a ($250,000.00) bequest, a token amount considering the size of Noland’s actual estate.  As a NY estate lawyer with three decades of experience challenging NY wills I would have to say these prior instruments created a strong pattern of donative intent on the part of Robert Noland donative intent towards McNeese State University.

To make matters worse for the 2020 instrument purporting to be Noland’s Last Will & Testament, the 2020 instrument was drafted by a different attorney named Robert Gray allegedly at Amanda’s request.  Again this fact alone is not fatal to the 2020 instrument, after all an individual should be able to retain the services of any attorney they choose to draft their Will as long as it is indeed their will and not the will of another.  However, the fatal flaw to the 2020 instrument being offered for probate as the Last Will & Testament of Robert Noland’s Estate comes from the fact Robert Noland’s somewhat estranged daughter Amanda Noland is named as the primary beneficiary of the philanthropist’s $15 million estate.  Why is this an issue? Any experienced NY estate lawyer will tell you that this is an issue because Robert Noland’s purported 2020 Last Will & Testament was a giant departure from Noland’s existing estate plan as memorialized in his five prior wills and his donative intent was well established throughout a lifetime of gifting to McNeese State University. 

Each of these facts, considered in the totality of circumstances surrounding this document’s execution would at the very least raise an inference, if not a finding, of undue influence in its creation.  Interestingly enough, during the trial of Robert Noland’s Estate to determine the 2020 purported instrument’s validity, the matter was settled for an undisclosed amount.  During the trial I am sure it became undoubtedly apparent to Amanda Noland that McNeese State University was likely to prevail and she decided to fold her cards for an undisclosed amount.  Again, looking at each factor by itself; doing a will in the last year of his life with a new lawyer that drastically deviated from prior testamentary patters while diagnosed with dementia on its face, does not establish undue influence.  That being said, when we look through the instrument through the lens of the totality of circumstances, it cannot be stated in good faith that the document was drafted by Noland free of any undue influence.  As such any NY estate lawyer would tell you Robert Noland’s 2020 purported Will should have been denied probate.

If you or a family member believe a NY will to be invalid or possibly the product of undue influence within a NY estate it never hurts to ask the opinion of an experienced Queens estate lawyer to see what NY inheritance rights you may have under the NY will.  Feel free to call the NY probate lawyers at The Law Offices of Jason W. Stern & Associates for a free consultation at (718) 261-2444.  Our NY probate lawyers have more than 75 years of combined NY estate law experience drafting and probating the wills for families like yours in the counties of Queens, New York, Kings, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, Orange and Dutchess.